Page 28 of Dangerous Exile
His head snapped back. “What do you think we are, Ness? Cutthroats? No. Declan is going to ensure their silence with few fat bags of coins.” His eyes narrowed at her. “What in the blasted hell kind of man do you think I am?”
“I don’t know—how should I know?” Her right hand waved manically in front of her. “You just pummeled a man in front of me. He looked dead—”
“He’s not dead.”
“He wasn’t far from it—what if Declan hadn’t pulled you off of him? What then? How do I know what you’re capable of? You own this place. Half of the surrounding area from what I’ve gathered. Everyone is afraid of you. And what you did, it was…it was…it was vicious.”
Talen had to take in a deep breath at the fear in her eyes. Breath that seethed back out through clenched teeth. “What they were about to do to you was vicious.”
Her mouth clamped closed, her eyes dipping to the floor between them.
He attempted to rein in the rage in his voice. “I’ll make no apologies for it, Ness. They deserved every blow that was laid.”
There it was. The exact man he was. The reality of it hanging in the air between them. Vicious. Cold. Brutal.
Better that she knew.
Silence for the longest stretch, her gaze solidly on the floor. A minute, probably more. But he wasn’t about to apologize for the very thing that was keeping her safe.
“I tried.” The smallest whisper eked from her lips, yet her eyes didn’t lift upward.
“What?”
“I tried.” Her look, skittish, ventured up, but only to his chest. “Thank you. Thank you for coming. I tried. I tried to get away, tried everything you taught me. I was desperate and going to try to sweep his feet next. But the lock he had on my hair was too harsh. But I was trying.”
It was small, but he heard it, the quiver in her voice. A quiver that made him pause. Pause and really look at her without rage tingeing his eyesight red.
Her dark hair was askew, the thick braid her hair was often in half undone. Tufts of hair errantly floating about her face. A tear in the right sleeve of her dress. Her breathing still ragged.
“Hell, Ness, are you okay?”
Her chest lifted in a deep breath and she finally met his gaze. “I—I am. I am fine, nothing more than bruises, and my arm survived the impact.”
His look jumped to her left arm. “Wait. What?”
She looked down, dropping her left arm along her skirts and angling her body slightly to the side to hide her left arm. “Nothing. I am fine. It is nothing.”
He took a step toward her. “What impact did your arm survive?”
She sighed. “My arm. The splint board broke when I slammed it into the groin of the one that had my hair. The one you pummeled.”
His brow furrowed. “You what?”
Her gaze went evasive. “I crushed it—the board—into his…uh…protruding member.”
“You what?” An instant chuckle vibrated up from his chest. “Well done.” But then his hand dragged down over his face, his head shaking. “No. Dangerous. You shouldn’t have put your arm through that—you could lose it, lose your whole arm if you injure it again and it becomes infected.”
Her glare met his. “I didn’t have anything else to grab to help me—no weapon. There was nothing in the hallway. The board was the only thing hard I could use because I had to save my knee for the other one’s ballocks.”
The laughter took him over again before he could look at her. “Again, well done. But dangerous—did you look at your arm? Does it hurt? It could be out of alignment.”
“I haven’t had a chance to look at it.”
He moved forward, dropping to balance on his heels in front of her. Snatching a pillow from the head of the bed, he set it on her lap and then gently grabbed her left arm from where she had hidden it and he set it atop the pillow.
Silently, a smile still playing at his lips, his attention stayed on her arm as he loosened the white linen bandaging that bound her broken arm to the splint. “You fought.”
“I did. For what little good it did.”